In Brazil, Police Are Killing at Will
Wearing Masks, Rogue Officers Carry Out Extortion and Deadly Violence
BELÉM, Brazil — The masked gunmen pulled up to Wanda’s Bar at 3:49 p.m. on May 19 and began firing the moment they left their vehicles. Two people, including Wanda herself, died on the patio.
Inside, the gunmen worked in silence: two in front, shooting unarmed patrons at the bar and in the main room, while a third followed behind with a gun in each hand, firing a shot into the head of anyone still moving.
When the massacre ended, 11 people lay dead. Only two people survived, one by hiding under a friend’s body, case files show.
Once again, masked gunmen had struck in the Brazilian city of Belém, as they have for nearly a decade, stalking the streets in open defiance of the law. Robbing, extorting and killing without compunction.
They did not belong to one of the gangs that traffic drugs or guns in Brazil, leaving a trail of corpses.
They were cops.
The killings drew national attention to the police militias that have long plagued Belém, a dilapidated port city on the Amazon River. Part death squad, part criminal enterprise, their ranks are filled with retired and off-duty police officers who kill at will.
The slaughter at Wanda’s Bar was not unique because off-duty police officers gunned down civilians without cause. What made this case stand out beyond its brutality was the government’s response: It decided to prosecute.
Of the seven people charged with the crime, four were off-duty police officers — including the three suspected gunmen.
“We’ve discovered a cancer inside the police,” said Armando Brasil, a prosecutor. “Now, we are seeing just how far it has spread.”
The militias operate in the shadows of a crackdown on crime by the Brazilian government, which has declared war on the gangs and drug dealers afflicting the nation. Killings by the police have soared in recent years.
The number of people officially killed by
the police reached a five-year high last year, rising to 6,220 — an average of 17 people each day, according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum. Police killings may exceed that this year, coaxed on by President Jair Bolsonaro, who thinks criminals should “die like cockroaches.”
The deaths have stirred a familiar debate in Brazil. Rights advocates denounce the approach as both inhumane and ineffective, while proponents say it is the only way to confront a crime wave that has put the entire nation at risk.
But even police officers acknowledge that the official statistics are only part of the picture.
There is a parallel form of police violence, masked from the public and carried out by illegal militias that draw their ranks from officers with little respect for due process, according to interviews with militia members in Belém.
By their own admission, groups of off-duty and retired officers regularly commit extrajudicial killings, targeting people they consider criminals, robbers and cop killers without so much as an arrest warrant.
“We’re going after criminals who hurt innocent people,” said one militia commander, who, like others, asked that his name be withheld because he confessed to killings.
Militia members say they are delivering a public service, eliminating threats to society.
“I’ve killed more than 80 criminals in my time as a police officer,” said another militia leader. “I’m a hero to my people. They love me.”
Homicide Crisis in Region
Latin America is in the midst of a homicide crisis. More killings take place in the region’s five most violent nations than in every major war zone combined, said the Igarapé Institute, which tracks violence.
The usual suspects are often to blame: the cartels and gangs; the surfeit of guns, frequently from the United States; the paralyzed legal systems.
But violence by the state is another factor in the bloodshed — driven by a belief that nations must fight force with ruthless force to find peace.
In Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico and other countries, the use of deadly force by the authorities — and the population’s acceptance, or even applause, for that approach — is so widespread that even the public statistics point to an abundance of extrajudicial killings.
In many dangerous places, even when gangs and organized crime are well armed, it is not surprising that criminals die in greater numbers than the police or military they are fighting, researchers say. But when that ratio is highly skewed, and 10 or more suspected criminals die for every police officer or soldier killed, researchers view that as an indication of excessive force.
In El Salvador, where the government is battling the gangs, the ratio is staggering — almost 102 to 1 — according to the Lethal Force Monitor, a research group. In Brazil, the number is also striking: 57 suspected criminals die for every police officer killed.
“We believe that homicides are not a problem, they’re a solution,” said Bruno Paes Manso, a researcher at the University of São Paulo, describing the public acceptance of killings by the police. “There is a strong belief that violence promotes order.”
Some militia members say they bill businesses for security services, taking in hefty sums with promises to keep the peace, or they
Yan Boechat contributed reporting. charge local residents for the right to engage in basic commerce. The militias also extort criminals and kill those who do not pay.
Today in Belém, there are hundreds of militia members operating in different factions, often with help from on-duty police officers, according to officials and militia members themselves. And until recently, officials say, the government rarely prosecuted them.
The government of Pará State says most police officers “do not deviate from their duties,” but acknowledges that others do. It says it has arrested about 50 officers this year.
A Mother in Grief
Over a week in November, The New York Times tracked seven police shootings in Belém, with nine casualties.
In one case, two men stole an S.U.V. and exchanged gunfire with the police as they tried to escape. When the vehicle stopped, one of the men was taken into custody, witnesses said, adding that he appeared injured but could walk.
An hour later, when he arrived at the hospital, he was dead, with a gunshot wound to the heart, a photo showed.
“I don’t know whether they executed him, and I don’t want to know,” his sister said on condition of anonymity. “The police here do what they want.”
Ramon Silva Oliveira, 18, was also killed. He and a friend were coming home from a party, sharing a motorcycle, when the police tried to stop them, the family said.
Ramon was young, black and had a large tattoo, which officers here openly admit arouses suspicion. But he was no gang member, his family said. He had applied to join the military and, for now, was looking for work. He played soccer well; medals hung in his room.
But that night, his friend, the driver, decided to keep going. The police fired at the two young men, striking Ramon and forcing the cycle to fall over. He died almost instantly.
“I don’t know whether the gunshot wound killed him or the fall,” said his mother, Marlene Silva de Oliveira, folded in grief. “I didn’t have the heart to go and look at his body.”
The family held a wake for him next to a plot of grass where children played soccer.
‘Allow Us to Kill Anyone’
In the case of Wanda’s Bar, the arrests began days after the massacre. Using surveillance footage from street cameras, investigators found the gunmen’s car at a repair shop.
The owner was trying to get some work done to the car, to disguise it. The authorities arrested four police officers — two hailed from the elite ROTAM force, known for its hyperviolence — and three others suspected in the crime.
Tying the murders to the police was straightforward. Analysts found numerous .40-caliber shells at the scene, a bullet available only to the military police, a prosecutor said. But a judge thinks the evidence is weak, with the motive unclear.
The bar is closed, a mausoleum to the events of May 19, and residents remain terrified.
The militia men interviewed for this article all felt the killings at Wanda’s Bar were inexcusable, but they defended the militias in general. To them, violence was the only solution.
“There’s a way to fix this,” said one. “The governor should call the good cops and let us go and allow us to kill anyone. Only the bad people, the criminals, those who prey on the weak.”
“That will finish the violence once and for all,” he said.